Families are left homeless in Helwan after being evicted from their homes to make way for a water purification plant, reports Reem Leila On the morning of 15 October, residents of Kafr Al-Elou in Helwan woke to the sound of 20 armoured vehicles which disgorged almost 1,000 Central Security personnel who then set about evicting the inhabitants of 23 houses before demolishing the buildings. Many families were unable to retrieve their belongings before the bulldozers arrived, and the streets remain strewn with broken furniture, torn clothes and other household items. The families too are now on the street, hofameless, camping next to the wreckage of their former lives. Helwan MP Mustafa Bakri says he first became aware of plans to evict the residents two months ago. "The governor of Cairo subsequently promised there would be no immediate demolitions but then Central Security Forces moved in and bulldozed the houses without giving residents any prior notice," Bakri told Al-Ahram Weekly. Ahmed El-Maghrabi, minister of housing, utilities and new communities, has already agreed to allocate two apartments to the poorest residents of the area while a local NGO will provide each family with LE2,000 and five blankets until alternative housing can be arranged, adds Bakri, who insists that there can be no repeat in Helwan of the saga of homelessness that was inflicted on residents of Qalaat Al-Kabsh earlier this year. "The government wants to drive us out of here," says Kafr Al-Elou resident Safaa Ramadan. It is a conclusion echoed by the vast majority of residents, understandably so given the way families were dragged from their homes at dawn by central security forces. Bakri has promised he will raise the manner of the evictions -- which left several people injured -- in the People's Assembly. He also wants to know the exact status of the land from which the families have been evicted, and is determined the authorities should not ignore the plight of the newly homeless families. Following the clashes government officials intervened to restore calm, promising residents a rapid solution to their problems. Wagih El-Dakhakhni, head of Helwan district, announced that the government will pay LE500 to each family that lost cultivated land, and LE2,000 to families that lost homes. The area's residents, he added, were renting the agricultural land and therefore are not technically eligible for compensation. "Despite this," he says, "we will not abandon them and are trying hard to solve the problem in coordination with Cairo governorate." "I've rented this land since 1954. Now where am I supposed to go with my wife and six children?" asks Magdy Abdel-Fattah. "Government officials have promised us compensation, but as usual nothing has happened and in the meantime we are without a roof over our heads." In the course of the demolitions, several residents were arrested for attempting to resist bulldozing their homes. "My brother was taken away," says Fatima Abdel-Moneim, "after he tried to stop them destroying the house he built seven years ago, and which cost him LE55,000." The land has been earmarked for the construction of a water purification plant. Yet, as Bakri points out, it is just 200 metres from a huge cement factory. "Any water produced here," he says, "is unlikely to be potable. It will be contaminated with cement dust and unfit for human consumption."
